


Breaking Hearts, Breaking Minds

by Richforce



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Relativity Falls, F/M, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 05:16:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18732340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Richforce/pseuds/Richforce
Summary: In his efforts to find source of the Gravity Falls weirdness Mason "Dipper" Pines calls his college sweetheart Candance "Candy" Chiu to help with his greatest experiment. As they proceed with their experiment the two reignite their romance but fall into the scheme of a monster.





	Breaking Hearts, Breaking Minds

Mason Pines had been waiting in front of his cabin impatiently since around dawn. He kept his trusty cap well over his forehead, the townsfolk already had enough rumors about his home, no need to add fuel to the fire.

A small car came over a nearby hill and in another minute came to a stop nearby. The car door opened and a Korean-American woman with long black hair, green blouse, black and a pair of glasses stepped out carrying a knapsack on her shoulder and a folded up electronic device from a handle in her right hand. “Mason, is it you?”

Mason lifted the brown baseball cap with the star on it revealing his birthmark shaped like Usra Major. “Could it be anyone else Candance?”

Candance put down the device and went into a hug with Mason. “Oh Mason! Calling me out of the blue like that, opportunity of a lifetime, I could hardly believe it!”

“That isn’t the most unbelievable thing out here Candance. Let me help you with your bags and I’ll explain when we get inside.”

After lowering his cap again, the two went over to the trunk and took out two large suitcases as he noticed some boxes in the back. Based on that observation Candance was expecting to be staying here for quite some time. After unloading her things into the parlor, they both sat down on the couch. Mason couldn’t help but smile, things were going to be perfect, he was on the verge of the greatest discovery of all time and now he had the help of his college sweetheart to make it happen.

Like Mason, everyone thought Candance weird growing up, but more for her ideas than anything else. When they met in Backsupmore they started out as study partners for a few classes but then he went on one date with her just to keep the jocks and popular girls in their dorms from teasing them. Then one date turned into two, then three and before long they were an actual item. At least until he decided to move on to do his research here while she got an enticing job offer in the tech field, so they decided to do the rational thing and break it off.

“So, you were working for one of those big computer companies,” Mason said. “Which one was it again, Pathway Systems, E-Tech?”

“Both,” Candance said wistfully. “They had a merger and now they’re Path-E-Tech Systems. It wasn’t quite what I’d imagined it to be in college, I even came up with this.” Candance had opened the device, what looked like some sort of portable computer. “It could revolutionize what we think about computers, but the bosses all said the same thing. ‘There’s not a big enough market for it to be viable, the applications are limited, the battery life will be horrendous, it’s too heavy to put on your lap.’ It all boils down to the same thing; money, money, money, money, money. It’s all becoming a business and I got into this for the science. Once I got your phone call, I gave them my two-weeks’ notice.”

“Well I can guarantee you there’s more than enough science here to last you a lifetime. This project is going to be huge, as in Mason Pines and Candance Chiu will be in the same place as Galileo, Newton, and Einstein. And that’s just the beginning, this quaint little town is full of mysteries.”

“Well the world is full of mysteries, for example ‘why is my head falling towards your shoulder’?” Candy quickly leaned on Mason. “Beeeoooooo.”

Mason gave a light chuckle. “Just like old times.”

“No, I think this is going to be even better.”

While Candance started to settle in Mason spent hours recounting his discoveries and sharing ‘almost’ everything about his Grand Unified Theory of Weirdness. Her own suggestions of the portal design sounded like pure genius.

“Mason you don’t mind if I keep my makeup in the parlor bathroom, do you?”

“Go right ahead and please, for you it’ll always be Dipper.”

“And for you it will always be Candy. I wonder what your family would think though, about you living together with a woman?”

“First my sister would probably check to see if I’m actually a pod person, then my parents will ask for me to slow things down.”

Candy laughed. “Well my father would probably just get his old service revolver out. But we’re adults and I’m living here purely to assist in scientific research, the fact it’s with my old boyfriend is icing on the cake.”

Mason chuckled again. “After six years living by myself it’s good to have someone to talk to. Listen, once you’re done unpacking, I’d like you to look at my journals…”

* * *

Weeks had passed and as they made further progress on the portal Mason and Candance also began to settle into living in the same house. They each had to readjust to each other’s little quirks, Mason’s frequently delaying doing his laundry, his tendency to chew on his pens and pencils or Candance’s collection of travel pamphlets and the Cubic’s Cube that she never let stay unsolved no matter how many times Mason would scramble it up, but it was much smoother than it was back in college. While the portal was progressing faster than Mason expected he also noticed a change in the atmosphere of the cabin, now that he had someone to share it with it somehow began to feel more like his old home back in Piedmont.

One morning however Candance came to breakfast and was almost hyperventilating. “Candy, is something wrong?”

She sat down at the breakfast table and then banged her head against it groaning. “I messed up! It’ll never work!”

“What do mean, the portal?”

“I was doing my usual quintuple check on my calculations when I noticed something was off, so I decided to sextuple check. We totally underestimated the power needs of the gateway, the best power source I can come up with to ensure a stable flow is a Temporal Displacement Hyperdrive, which I estimate humanity will be able to invent in about TEN THOUSAND YEARS! I need comfort food. Do we still have any of that cereal with marshmallows?”

Mason sighed. He had the solution, but it involved one of his biggest secrets but looking at Candance thinking back to the work they’ve done to this point he knew he could trust her. “Four days.”

“Dipper, we can’t possibly build one in four days.”

“Not build, just pick up,” Mason made Candance look into his eyes. “Candy what I am about to tell you is going to change your life forever, but there’s no one else I’d trust with this knowledge. There’s a location in Gravity Falls I’ve classified as Crash Site Omega. About thirty million years ago an enormous alien spacecraft crashed in the area forming the valley, why I’ve never found out but while the aliens presumably died in or soon after the crash their tech is still there and salvageable.”

“WHAT?!” Candance fell out of her chair. “Real extraterrestrials!? And you’re sure there was a working hyperdrive there!?”

Mason took a long sip of his coffee as Candance got up. “I’m 99.98% certain, I’ve already used some the material from the site for a few of my more ambitious projects, including some components of the portal and it sounds like the sort of tech I already found there, we just need my intuition and your mechanical know how to identify it. A two day hike up to CSO to salvage the hyperdrive and other components we may need, two days back, we’ll have it back in the lab in four days. Easy as trigonometry.”

“You mean you want me on one of your missions?”

Mason took a good look into Candance’s eyes. “Not just want need, I can’t do this without you. Someone important once told me genius happens with the help from a friend, we’ll be an unstoppable science team, like Pierre and Marie Currie.”

Candance blushed. “Well the Curries did die from radiation poisoning but, I DON’T CARE! When do we leave?!”

“Tomorrow morning, we’ll spend today packing and making preparations, I already had plans to take you out tonight at the Club…”

“Gravity Falls most exclusive restaurant?!”

“I wanted to take you when you got here but this was the closest reservation I could manage; just means we’ll have something to celebrate. Then after a good night’s sleep we’ll be ready to hike our way into the history books!”

Candy gave Dipper a big hug. “This is wonderful, I’m going to started right away! We’ll probably also need to go shopping for some supplies, this is going to be so much fun!”

Mason sighed with contentment, today was going even better than he planned.

Hours later they were both dressed up and drinking champagne in the high-end restaurant. Candance was in the middle of telling a story. “So, then I said, ‘well if you didn’t want to collapse the waveform why did you peel the banana?!’”

Mason laughed out loud. “Peel the banana! HAHAHA! Oh, I haven’t heard a joke like that in years!” Mason took a deep breath. “I should never have worked alone for so long. You really have it all, brains and heart, and I don’t mean the pump for the circulatory system.”

“I understand perfectly,” Candance said holding Mason’s hand. “I often wished I stayed with you, even if I sometimes drove you crazy with some of my… eccentricities.”

“It was no problem at all, you actually reminded me of Mabel, before we had our… falling out…”

“Your sister, the one who ran away from home? I know it’s a touchy subject but what was she like?”

Mason smiled. “Put glitter on everything, as excitable as a hydrogen atom in cyclotron and so friendly she became pen pals with the pizza delivery guy the minute he was at the door. You two would probably have been best friends, not sure if that would have boded well for me or not.”

“Who knows? Maybe once you announce your findings the two of you can get back together again and make things up.”

“Just another reason for our project to succeed,” Mason reached into his pocket and palmed what was inside. “You know once we are done, there’s bound to be more projects that I’ll need help with. Would you consider partnering up on a longer-term basis?”

Candance put down the champagne glass. “What do mean, longer-term? A year, two, five?”

“What would you say to taking part in a long-term experiment on the effects of proximity and emotional support on an individual’s scientific output and psychological well-being?”

Candance had a confused look. “Proximity to what? And I never took psychology…”

“Let me put it in layman’s terms.”

Mason got out of his chair and knelt in front of her. “Candance Chiu…” he took out a small box and opened it to reveal a gold ring with a decent sized diamond. “Will you give me the honor of being the Pierre Currie to your Marie?”

Candance gasped. “Mason! I…I…” She then burst into tears. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Candance let Mason slip the ring onto her finger and the other patrons gave them a round of applause.

“Oh Dipper, I’m so happy I came to Gravity Falls!”

“And I’m happy you came Candy!”

The two of them were going to be family, amid it all Mason couldn’t help but think of where his sister was while he was having what was now the happiest moment of his life…

* * *

Meanwhile in the bayou…

Mable had just crashed her airboat into a bait shop as the alligator tried to bite off her head once more. She sidestepped the 16-foot reptile and then took off her sweater and tied its sleeves around its mouth subduing it.

“Take that lizard lips!” she shouted as she pinned the reptile with her foot. “No gator takes a bite out of Mabel Pines!”

Then there was the sudden burst of a searchlight turning on, the sound of police sirens and the clicks of cocked guns followed by the shout of “Turn around slowly with your hands in the air!”

“Let me guess,” Mabel sighed as she complied with the order. “I’m banned from Louisiana?”

* * *

The fresh Oregon air filled Mason’s lungs leaving him energized. After starting at dawn, the couple had made their way through a granite pass until around noon they stopped to rest. “Once we hit the lake, we’ll take my secret pass through the mountain and onto CSO. Bet you could breathe this air all day right sweetie?”

Candance however looked winded and sat down on the nearest rock. “Why couldn’t we have driven to the lake and save a full day’s trip?”

“A full day with a car parked out in the open that could possibly lead to CSO falling into the wrong hands. That last thing we want out of this trip is a ‘close encounter’ with a government agency.” Dipper rubbed the engagement ring Candance insisted on buying for him from a late-night pawn shop in town, a gold band with a few tiny diamonds on top. “Besides now that we’re getting married, I want you with me for as long as possible, the exercise will do us both good.”

Candance took her walking stick and began to doodle a diagram in the dirt while eating a sandwich from her backpack. “In that case maybe I should invent a pair of robot legs, to help people who have trouble walking, like me right now.”

Suddenly a quacking noise came from a nearby bush. Out popped a strange duck-billed, beaver-tailed creature with a coat in a pattern resembling a red and black flannel jacket that smelled remarkably of bacon and maple syrup.

Candance was awed at her first real anomaly. “Dipper, is that one of the creatures you’ve been studying?”

“Unbelievable,” Mason said as he began sketching in his journal. “It’s a Plaidypus!  According to local folklore its pelt was used as the first lumberjack’s jacket which was incredibly warm, impervious to mosquito bites and reliably went in and out fashion every ten or so years!” the creature began sniffing at the breadcrumbs left by Candance’s sandwich. “Looks like the little fella’s hungry.”

Candance gave her sandwich to the Plaidypus who began to eat with gusto. “The little lady’s hungry, it’s a girl.”

“Neither of us have seen one before, how can you tell?”

Candance pointed to the bush where a black and red colored egg in a plaid pattern rested. “It’s so incredible, so you think she came from this weirdness dimension?”

“More likely her ancestors did, but that’s what we’re out to prove.”

Candance took out another sandwich. “Do you think we’ll find more creatures like this on the way to the crash site?”

“I’d say it’s a high probability, but we have to careful, not all anomalies are going to be as harmless as the Plaidypus.”

Candance had a fierce look to her. “I’ve taken Taekwondo; I’d probably be better off protecting you.”

“In a straight up fight I’d agree, but I’ve brought along a few tricks I’ve picked up for protection. Most of the time you need to fight weird with weird.”

“You know I don’t feel so tired anymore, let’s set off once we’ve both eaten!”

The rest of the first day held a couple of other milestones. At the lake they found an enormous tooth that hinted at one of the islands being a giant beast of some kind and in the cave behind Trembly Falls they even discovered a whole new type of mineral creature that Mason classified as Geodites. Now the sun had set, and they laid back around the campfire looking up at the stars.

“So once this project is complete what do you want out of the future?” Mason asked.

Candance sighed. “I always wanted to be an independent inventor, I’d like to start a private lab where I could make robotics and other devices to improve people’s lives, maybe use the patents to get a house with a nice picket fence near a good school. What about you?”

“Once I find the Grand Unified Theory of Weirdness I’d like to go back to Piedmont, publish my findings, become the toast of the scientific community, rub elbows with presidents and prizewinners, and make my family proud, maybe even get Mabel to come home.”

“I don’t understand, you’ve already seen so many amazing things and recorded them in your journals, you could publish now and settle down with a certain someone, is this ‘Grand Theory’ of yours really necessary?”

Mason laughed. “Once this town is revealed to the world there’ll be a ‘Weirdness Rush’ of scientists coming down here. If I don’t find it first, then…one of them will and I’ll be lost to the history books. No, it hasn’t been easy, but I prefer the road less traveled.” Mason turned over and looked into Candance’s eyes. “But I’m grateful that I can now travel it with someone I love.”

The two kissed repeatedly, then Candance had a very sly expression as she took her glasses off. “How would you like to help me run an experiment on chemical reactions and heat exchange?”

Mason returned the sly gaze. “I don’t know, can we take the proper precautions?”

“Why don’t you find out?” Candance said as she got up and went into the tent they pitched up.

After putting out their campfire Mason made his way to the tent unbuttoning his shirt. Then under nothing but the tent and starlight, the two conducted the “experiment” then fell into a deep comforting sleep.

* * *

The next morning had found the scientists instilled a new vigor. After a brush with what Mason thought was the legendary Hide-Behind and spotting some cows with a crop circle pattern on them they made it to Crash Site Omega by noon. Seeing Candance filled with the same awe he had when he first discovered the ship Mason felt the same excitement just sharing one of his biggest finds with another brilliant mind. Working together they both found the hyperdrive and decided to take a short cut Candance calculated would get them home before sunset.  The two walked down holding hands admiring such sights as a giant pterosaur skeleton.

“We’re past the hard part,” Candance said. “But even with the Hyperdrive it’ll be useless unless we can find some highly radioactive fuel for it.”

Mason beamed. “Already covered Candy, there’s a government facility nearby where they bury nuclear waste. It might not be technically legal, but we’ll just get a few barrels and provide a better long-term solution to them than burying the things and hope the barriers don’t leak for a few millennia.”

 “We’ll be helping the environment and uncovering the mysteries of the universe at the same time,” Candance laughed. “It’s kind of funny, with the work the two of us are putting on this portal it feels like it’s our baby and we haven’t even set a wedding date yet. When I was a young girl I always dreamed of getting married in…”

Mason brought them to a sudden stop. A large humanoid creature with green skin, fangs, claw and quills sleeping right in the middle of the path snoring like dozen chainsaws. “A Gremloblin!” Mason took out his journal and began sketching. “These are incredibly rare! I didn’t have a chance to get a sketch of one the last time I saw a specimen, but this is perfect!”

“Dipper honey, maybe you should leave him alone,” said Candance. “I don’t think he’d like us hanging around when he wakes up.”

“Relax Sweetie. I know from experience that Gremloblins are very heavy sleepers, a novice could cage one without waking it up. We should be safe as long as we don’t make any loud noises…”

Suddenly Candance’s backpack started making a very loud sound like an alarm. Worried she opened it and pulled out the hyperdrive which was lighting up like a Christmas tree and making the alarm.

“Candy what did you do?!”

“Nothing! Maybe the change in air pressure set it off?!”

Whatever was the cause it caused Gremloblin to wake up and turn immediately to the offending racket. In almost an instant it leaped over to Candance grabbed her in one hand and gazed into her eyes as its own glowed and hers followed suit.

Mason began to feel his blood boil. “Leave her alone!” he yelled threw his canteen to scare it off. The lid came off splashing it with water. Soon after it began to grow larger, uglier and sprouted a pair of wings. “Ok water mutates it, that would have been nice to know.”

The beast then took flight down the trail Mason quickly gave chase ignoring the branches that were tearing his clothes and scratching him. _“No! I’m going lose Candy and the hyperdrive! There has to be someway stop that brute, if he thinks he can overcome our attraction… wait attraction, that’s it!”_

Mason pulled out a device he made after his last trip to CSO two years earlier, a gun that fired a focused magnetic field to attract or repel metallic objects. He sent the gun to “attract” and aimed at the hyperdrive still tightly held in Candance’s arms.

“Ha!” after pulling the trigger the gun was attracted to the hyperdrive pulling Mason through the air until he landed on the Gremloblin’s back. The beast began trying to fly into trees to dislodge his passenger. “Let my fiancé go!”

With all the strength he could muster Mason pistol whipped the back of the Gremloblin’s neck with the magnet gun. The beast was rendered unconscious and began fell from the sky along with Mason and Candance straight through the roof of a barn!

Mason woke up to the whinnies of startled horses that seemed to be calming down, thankfully they all landed in a soft hayloft with the hyperdrive safely cradled in an empty trough.

“Candy!” Mason looked around. The Gremloblin was still out cold but Candance was awake and muttering to herself.

“Its eyes…the nightmares…”

Coming closer he found that she was in such a state of shock that she didn’t notice that her arm was broken and pierced with the Gremloblin’s venomous quills.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no!” Mason got Candance to her feet and used the first aid kit in his backpack to make a splint for her arm after he removed the quills. “Don’t worry, I can treat the venom back home. I’ll just pick up the hyperdrive and we’ll leave before this place’s owners come and start asking questions.” He turned back to the Gremloblin who was starting to stir. “Hopefully after we’re out of here, you’ll do the same big guy.”

The bride and groom to be were gone in a minute.

* * *

Once Mason had whipped up some antivenom for Candance he took her to the local doctor to look at her arm. Thankfully the fracture was minor, and she’d be able to take off the cast in four weeks. But during those four weeks Mason noticed that his fiancé’s mental wounds weren’t so easily treated. Mason had been doing most of the physical work on the portal while Candance recovered but even then, she was the one unable to sleep for days. The times she did manage to nod off she’d soon wake up screaming. Mason tried to teach her some meditation techniques he learned but Candance was skeptical.

“I know from my family that meditation can help your mind, but what I saw…”

“We’ll figure a way through this,” Mason said holding her hand. “We’re scientists, if we combine our knowledge with our creativity there’s no problem we can’t solve, even our fears.”

The morning after the cast off Candance came into the study Mason kept she knew about and laid a strange looking gun on his desk while she beamed.

Mason picked the gun up. “I like science fiction as much as the next guy, but I can’t place where this ray gun is supposed to be from.”

“It’s not a prop,” said Candance. “I was up all of last night working on it and this should be the solution to my recent anxiety attacks. It can target and disassemble neurological pathways in the brain, more specifically the ones affecting memory, and store the information in a special tube, you can even specify specific memories to erase! One blast of this and I won’t remember what happened with the Gremloblin and that’s just the beginning! The applications for the treatment of mental illnesses and in criminal rehabilitation alone are immense!”

“The applications for criminals, spies and potential dictators are even bigger and more concerning!” Mason scolded. “Candy, we had to take that ‘Ethics in Research and Experimentation’ course for a reason. I know you made this thing with the best of intentions, but this is too dangerous to keep.”

Candance huffed. “Dipper as scientists we can only share our findings and inventions with the world, not tell people how to use them. Alfred Noble did so much good when he invented dynamite, it wasn’t his fault the military used it in war.”

“Yes, but the guilt drove him to reward millions of dollars to those who contributed to world peace. This gun can be straight up catastrophic, you have to destroy it.”

“Dipper…”

“Besides the Gremloblin was part of a series of events. The Plaidypus, the Geodites, the crop circle patterned cows, Crash Site Omega…my proposal and that wonderful night we shared, you might end up erasing all of that too. Do you really want to risk it?”

Candance bowed her head. “You…you’re right I don’t want to lose any of that. I’ll do it right now.” Candance reached into her lab coat and pulled out a hammer and hung it over the memory gun. “Ok here goes…one…two…is that a government truck outside the window?”

Dipper turned around and looked out. “Where?! Are they after the nuclear…!”

The moment his back was turned Candance laid the hammer to one side set the memory gun to “last five seconds” and fired it at her fiancé. While Mason moaned then clutched his head, Candance stuffed the gun into her lab coat and threw some spare parts in her pocket on the table.

“What happened?”

“Screech owl,” said Candance. “Frightened both of us, well in any case it’s done.”

Mason looked at the scrap on his desk then swept it into his wastebasket. “Glad that’s over.”

“Me too, marriages are built on trust and I don’t want to risk ours by keeping big secrets from each other. I think I’ll make some tea then take a nap. Once I’m done, we’ll get back to working on our ‘baby’ in the basement.”

“I’ll see you there.”

As Candance turned to the kitchen she took another look at the gun. _“Dipper’s right about one thing, there are some memories I don’t want to lose. I better test the heck out of this before I use it on myself.”_

Meanwhile Mason went to the storage room and the hidden elevator to the basement. _“Sorry Candy, but I have to keep this big secret for a little bit longer. But once the portal is complete and we have the theory I’ll tell you all about my friend, my muse.”_

He got off at his second study, the one not even Candance knew about, and focused on a tapestry of a pyramid with a single eye, a bow tie and a top hat.

* * *

It was a few days since Candance fully recovered, the scientists were sitting down to omelets.

“The soviets claimed that the pilots did not know it was a civilian aircraft when it violated their airspace,” the news anchor said on the radio. “The US military remains at Defcon Three. In local news used car dealer Gideon Gleeful…”

Mason turned the radio off. “Listen Candy, even after the incident with the Gremloblin and our fight over that gun of yours we’ve been going at this project full tilt, we both need a day off.”

“I appreciate it Dipper,” said Candy. “So, what did you have in mind, a picnic, a movie?”

“Actually, I found this in the morning paper.” Mason showed Candance a flyer.

“Mama Misfortune’s Traveling Carnival and Freak Show? Honey you told me that with current disability laws the stuff at these freak shows are fake.”

“Well most of it is, but rarely something genuinely anomalous is hidden away among the trash. But I’m thinking of taking my girl, win something cuddly for her and ride the rides. Come on, there’ll be cotton candy.”

“Right in the sweet tooth. Ok, I suppose the mysteries of the universe can wait for one day.”

“Great, make yourself pretty and I’ll met you at the car.”

The carnival seemed like your basic affair; a Faris Wheel, dunk tank, carnival games, a pig race and various other attractions; but Candance had really enjoyed it, particularly winning first prize at the pig race using advanced mathematical probability. Mason on the other had took one look at the freak show and was immediately disappointed, with exhibits like the “Gorr-icken” and the “Crabbit” which were just a gorilla and chicken then a crab and rabbit that were duct-taped together. It was lazy and of questionable morality, but the gullible townsfolk seemed to eat it up.

Still he tried to make the best of it and after a ride on the oddly named “Tunnel of Love and Corndogs” the two were more at ease. “I have to go powder my nose,” Candance told him once they got off. “Go find something fun and I’ll meet you at the Farris Wheel.”

Mason sighed as she went off, he noticed a few people were gathered around a tent with a sign marked “Read your palm” and thought that exposing a fraud might be good for a laugh. He went into the dimly lit tent where an old crone was sitting at a rickety table her hands moving over a crystal ball. In one corner was what looked like a cage that seemed to be filled with severed hands, though Mason hoped it was just a trick of the light.

“What took you so long, Dipper?” the palm reader said. A chill went down Mason’s spine, only Candance and his sister still called him by his childhood nickname. Before he could ask further, the palm reader took out a deck of what looked like tarot cards and began to shuffle them quickly. “Let us see what hand fate has dealt you.”

The palm reader stopped shuffling and then dealt four cards on the table, ones that didn’t resemble typical tarot cards. First was a forested valley bathed by the light of the moon, second a serpent that slithered through a hole in a pyramid, third a blindfolded woman who had a sword in each hand and finally a skull on a field of black.

On seeing the result, the palm reader screamed. “What’s going on?!” Mason demanded.

The palm reader looked at him with pained sympathy. “You are being deceived by someone very close to you. You have chosen the wrong allies. You will live two lives and both too short…” suddenly the palm reader pointed a gnarled finger at Mason with a look of authority. “…Unless you change now.”

The palm reader reached into her tattered cloak and pulled out a strange ring with a blue stone. Mason had seen something like this in college. “A mood ring, I have to change for this?”

“This ring doesn’t read moods, but fates. While this is blue you may pull through, while this is black you can’t turn back.”

Mason took the ring without looking at it. “Listen can we get on with the palm reading already, how much?”

“No charge for one who might pay a very heavy cost without my insight.”

She went over Mason’s right hand. “The marks on this finger tell me you should think before you shoot. This line says your relationships tend to be short, no one wants to hold a rose with too many thorns.”

Mason rolled his eyes. _“Bet she wouldn’t say that if she was reading the hand with the engagement ring.”_

“You have a long wisdom line, you’re too smart for your own good.”

“I’ll take that as compliment.”

“Your life line is broken, it seems to stop abruptly then start again later, but this line is the most crucial.” She pointed at a line in his palm that split into two. “You are coming to a crossroads; you have an important decision to make very soon. Choose wrong and you will never be yourself again.”

“Well that’s good life advice from someone who sleeps in a wagon with, hopefully, fake severed hands.” Mason said sarcastically. “If you know that much about me what do you say about this? Mason lifted his cap and revealed his birthmark.”

“Yes, you were marked by the stars for a most unusual destiny. If you aren’t doing anything later maybe, we could go out for drinks?”

“Are you flirting with me!?” Mason bolted up out of the seat, put the blue ring in the palm of his right hand and flashed his engagement ring in the palm reader’s face. “Read this crackpot! I am engaged to the most wonderful and brilliant woman I know! We’re going to do great things and be happy together! That’s the future, you shyster!”

“Your hubris blinds you!” The palm reader said with a strangely deeper voice as she pointed at him once more it seemed like her eyes rolled back into the head and the dim lighting made it look like they glowed. “Change your ways or you WILL be betrayed!”

Mason picked up his things and stormed out of the tent without a word. He grumbled to himself while heading to the Faris Wheel. “Stupid old hag!”

By the time he got there the Farris Wheel had a sign reading “Out of Order” hanging on it and Candance was working on the gear system along with a carnie who looked like he was in his late teens to early twenties with tattoos on his head that resembled a diagram in the pseudoscience of phrenology, he had a name tag that read “Ivan Wenler” on his shirt.

“…And I was locked in that haunted freak house all night!” Ivan told Candance. “I lost sleep for weeks, I wish I could forget the whole thing…”

Candance whispered something to him and handed him a note with a symbol Mason couldn’t quite make out. Mason was curious but he also had enough of the place. “Candy, we’re leaving.”

Candance turned back to Ivan. “Think about it, ok?” As they walked towards the parking lot Candance looked at Mason with concern. “Dipper, what’s wrong?”

Mason sighed. “Nothing, I just went to a palm reader on a lark and she ended up pushing a lot of my buttons.”

“I’m sorry this wasn’t so fun for you, tell you what once we get home how about we play a game of Dungeons, Dungeons and more Dungeons like we did back in college?”

“I think I’d like that.” And Mason reached for the keys his car he remembered the ring the palm reader gave him. He saw that it was still blue then quickly stuffed it into his pocket as he took out the keys.

* * *

A couple of nights later Mason and Candance cuddling in bed, both only had their underwear on now. Their pillow talk had extended to scientific matters more often than most couples but to them it seemed like just another common night.

“Honey I’ve been thinking,” Candance said as the stroked Mason’s chest. “Once we get this portal operational there’s a good probability that some more creatures might slip into our world and some of them will most likely be dangerous.”

“Sweetie are you still worried about what happened to…”

“No, I’m fine now. But if something does come through or we manage to capture something we’ll need a place to keep and study them, somewhere they can’t hurt the townsfolk or get in the way of our projects.”

Mason stroked Candance’s hair. “What do you have in mind?”

“Another lab, underground and built with precautions and safeguards in mind. A bunker where we can contain and study these creatures away from the townsfolk and our home.”

Mason sighed. “Building this thing will push back finishing the portal by a while, but you have a point, besides what scientist wouldn’t want to build a secret lab? We’ll start designing it first thing in the morning.”

Candance gave Mason a peck on the cheek. “I knew you’d understand.” A sultry look crossed her face. “I just had a crazy idea.”

“I like your crazy ideas.” Mason said seductively.

“In that case let’s slip on some socks, head down to your electron carpet and test our romantic performances in each other’s bodies.”

“That sounds like an experiment I can get behind.”

The next day they found a hollowed-out tree that would make a good entrance to the bunker, Candance insisted that she could handle excavating the site on her own while Mason could continue investigating anomalies. He was slightly skeptical but started to notice a few of the local lumberjacks, including the teenage girl who helped to build his cabin Wendy “Wild Girl” Corduroy, coming to and from the site. Figuring Candance hired them he asked Wendy about what was going on but when she said she couldn’t remember he began to think he imagined it.

The payoff however was well worth it, a bunker for supplies for any overnight studies, a security chamber Mason felt was a bit excessive, an observation chamber to study specimens in safety and the storage facility itself, a surrounded by bedrock and reinforced steel and equipped with cryogenic chambers they felt nothing could escape. Candance even mentioned that the tubes could be used in the event of a nuclear war or paranormal disaster to freeze themselves and emerge in the future when the trouble had passed. Mason just gently reminded her that it was a lab and not a bomb shelter and went onto find a test subject for the cryonic tubes.

The next day Mason came in holding a pet carrier and wearing a surgical mask. “Candy you won’t believe what I found while excavating for more signs of the indigenous people of the valley!” He gave an identical mask to Candy and then opened the pet carrier. Out came a small maggot-like creature. “He might not be that pretty but look at what he can do!”

Mason showed the creature a picture of a rabbit and then almost instantly the creature became a rabbit complete with twitching nose.

“That’s amazing! A great first test subject for the bunker, I kind of don’t want to test the cryonic tube on the little guy though.”

“Then we’ll just get a chicken or something from one of the local farms. You know I always wanted a pet, but my parents already had a cat and the dorms had that strict ‘no pets’ policy. I thought about getting a dog but with my research I just never had the time.

“All I ever had was a goldfish, now we have something that can be anything. What should we call him?”

“How about…Shifty?”

“I love it! Welcome to your home Shifty!”

Over the next week the test of the lab systems progressed, as did Shifty’s growth and learning, not only did it learn several new forms, but it began to talk, even question who he was. It also asked to see Mason’s journal numerous time Mason refusing each one, the forms in the third journal alone would have troubling implications.

Then one-night Mason was thinking about turning in when Candance came in coughing. “Honey, I have a sore throat, can you get your journal so I can look up one of those magical remedies?”

“There’s enough cough drops in the first aid cabinet to last months, can’t you take one of those?”

“No, I already tried, I think I might have caught something from one of the anomalies. The journal has to have the answer.”

“Ok, sorry I hid it so well. Can’t have Shifty turning into a Gobblewonker or something like that.”

“Or something.” Candance chuckled as she coughed.

Mason left the observation room and went to his bunk, as he unlocked the door, he thought he heard muffled noises coming from a cabinet. He opened cabinet and saw Candance tied up with her mouth gagged by sock stuffed into her mouth. “Candy?! What’s going on?!”

Mason removed the gag Candance was crying. “Shifty did this, he wants the journal.” She pointed at the broken steel cage in the corner, the bars had been ripped outward. “I tried to stop him, he became me and matched my Tae Kwon Do move for move. When I wouldn’t tell him where your journal was, he stuffed me in here to trick you. Dipper if he gets out there’s no telling what damage he’ll do!”

“Ok, stay calm Candy. We need to think of a way to contain him.” He noticed a can of gold spray paint in the same cabinet. “Sweetie go get that plumber’s manual we used to set up the pipes in here. If Shifty wants a journal, then let’s give him one.”

After spray painting a pine tree on the manual and then tossing it into one of cryonic tubes Mason went to the observation room where the “Imposter” Candance was sitting. He noticed that the steel armrests were slightly bent by its “Hands”.

“Did you find it?” the imposter croaked.

“I just remembered; in my carelessness I left the thing in the cryonics chamber…”

The imposter bolted up out of the chair and ran into the storage room. Mason watched the video fed in the storage room with his palm above a large red button. The disguised shifty stepped into room and the moment he entered the tube Mason hit the button sealing the tube shut. The creature screamed, changed into a hideous new form and pounded on the glass before it was frozen solid.

Candance came in. “Is it over?” she whispered.

“Yeah, I’m sorry that Shifty wasn’t what we thought but I feel worse that he fooled me, and you almost paid the price for it Candy.”

“I’m still a little shaken but I think I can move on. We should probably put off this storage idea for a while, seal off the security measures and come back once we actually have the portal working.”

“Yeah that sounds good and I promise once the portal’s complete we’ll set a date, send invitations, the whole nine yards! Once we have the theory, the next major project we’ll work on will be our wedding!”

“Dipper…”

Mason looked into Candance’s eyes. “Yes, my sweet?”

“How about next time, we just get a puppy?”

* * *

Since the incident with “Shifty” all their focus and efforts went to the portal, sleep was less frequent and so was time just spent being together. Between the incident in the bunker and all the focus on completing the portal it was all business in the lab Mason and Candance felt colder to each other, it was getting hard for them to remember the last time they even just cuddled. Even help Mason got from his muse to do a few calculations while he slept had planted further doubts. The muse told him that Candance might not be committed to the goal, that she wasn’t bold enough to see things through to the end. He didn’t want to believe it but after two bad experiences with the paranormal and a lot of time spent lately with a new “club” she seemed hesitant to talk about he was afraid his muse was right.

After a rush of activity, many late nights and one time they blacked out the whole town, the portal was complete. Mason and Candance were treating themselves to a night out at Greasy’s Diner before the first full test. Mason raised a glass of apple cider into the air. “I propose a toast, to our future success!” Candance however didn’t raise her glass, she wouldn’t even look Mason in the eye. “Candy what’s wrong?”

“I’ve been having second thoughts about this whole mission,” Candance slipped a napkin to Mason, on it was scratched a graph marked “Probability of Failure” with an arrow going up over the measure of time. “After going through the final calculations, I think I noticed some deep flaws in the design, flaws that could be catastrophic to the town we… we have to stop.”

“How deep are these flaws?”

Candance sighed. “If we want to continue, we’ll have to dismantle everything and take it all back to formula.”

“Start over from scratch!? Candy we’re so close, practically on the finish line! There has to be some mistake!”

“I’ve gone over the calculations twelve times and I don’t think thirteen is going to be our lucky number!”

Mason was starting feel his temper flare. “We’ve been over these calculations since day one and everything was fine, how can you only find this supposed flaw now?!”

Candance squared up against him. “Because even when we started, I’ve felt like this was something beyond me and quite frankly beyond you! There were times, especially lately where It seems like you had a third person in on this project, someone whose been feeding you information on this portal even before you called me!” Candance now looked Mason square in the eye, pleading. “Dipper, where are these ideas coming from!? Who are you working with?!”

Mason took a deep breath, given everything perhaps it was past time he told her about his special friend. Then he noticed the large stack of papers she pulled out of her handbag trembling. He had seen enough thesis papers to know one on sight. He looked at the title and read it aloud.

“The Astonishing Anomalies of Gravity Falls, by Mason Pines P.H.D.?”

“I spent the last three days without a break working on this, it has all of your greatest discoveries.” Candance set the paper on the counter. “Publish this, this is your research, I merely went through the trouble of cataloguing it for you. There are enough discoveries here to make you a multimillionaire. With this you’ll have everything you’ve ever wanted, and you won’t need to go through with this risky test. Forget about the portal and the Grand Unified Theory of Weirdness! Publish this and we can get our lives back and move on! Publish this and we can just get married!”

It felt so off to him, multimillionaire when she felt so stifled that business had got in the way the pursuit of knowledge? To Mason it sounded exactly like his muse warned him, that someone he trusted for so long had wanted him to give up when victory was in his grasp. He even considered the possibility that she wanted the theory for herself, that she’d be the one who got the accolades while he was left with the scraps. He decided not to give the paper another look.

“Check please!”

“Dipper!” Candance said almost clawing at him. “Please listen to me!”

Mason grumbled. “I’ll conduct test tomorrow night eight o’clock sharp, with or without you. I’d much rather it be with you, but the choice is yours if you want to be left behind. I… need to take a walk to cool off.”

After the waitress “Golden Voice” Grenda left the check Mason paid for it and walked out into the twilight. “Need an ear to listen to your troubles sister?” Grenda said in her usual soothing tone.

Candance got up herself and stuffed the thesis into her handbag. “I… have a meeting tonight with some friends in town. Thanks anyway, but it looks like one of us will be taking the couch tonight.” Once Candance left the dinner she found a burn barrel lit for late working lumberjacks. In a fit of anger, she took the thesis she made for Mason and tossed the whole thing in the fire.

Mason was by the lake deep in thought. _“What was I thinking? We’re not rivals, we’re a team. We’re not Tesla and Edison, we’re Pierre and Marie! My Muse said Candy ‘might’ not be committed not that she isn’t. She’ll get over her cold feet and once we’ve proven the theory the whole world will know there’s nothing our minds can’t accomplish together!”_

He felt something in his pocket, pulling it out it was the ring the palm reader gave him months ago that he just absent-mindedly stuffed in there as he got ready to leave the house. The stone was now pitch black.

_“While this is blue you may pull through, while this is black you can’t turn back.”_ The palm readers words echoed in his memory.

Mason chucked the ring into the lake. It sank into the depths that were as inky black as the stone now was.

_“I don’t believe in superstitions; I believe in science and in my fiancé. We are scientists and after tomorrow we’ll be great ones.”_

* * *

The night of the test had finally arrived, in the basement of the cabin Mason looked at the clock he had on the desk in front of the viewing window rather than the countdown timer running to activation. Quarter to eight and still no sign of Candance, they hadn’t even spoken to each other since last night and he feared he may have chased her off in his stubbornness. He made one last check on the crash dummy that was supposed to be sent through the portal to test for safety. The rope was secure, there was nothing else to do but wait for the portal to finish charging up.

Suddenly the elevator opened and Candance steeped out, dressed in her lab coat and a serious expression.

Mason grinned as he gave his fiancée a hug. “Candy, I knew you’d make the right decision!”

“I’m sure not I have Dipper,” Candance sighed. “But if you’re going to do this regardless, then it’d be better if I was here to help.”

Mason lost his grin but got a grip and became stoic. “Alright then, it’s time to do this thing.”

The countdown hit zero and the aperture in the middle of the triangular surface shone with a bright light. They Mason held on to the dummy while Candance held onto the rope as they stepped up to the black and yellow hazard line that marked where the portal’s gravity can begin to draw in objects during normal operation.

“Ready and…” Mason released the dummy causing it to float towards the portal.

Suddenly Candance screamed as the rope she was holding got wrapped around her wrist and was pulling her into the portal as well.

“What?!” Mason grabbed on the rope and pulled. The rope had gotten undone around Candance’s wrist, but he got it taut around her ankle, but while he was able to keep most of her in her head had still crossed the threshold of the portal.

“Candy! I got you Sweetie!” With one final pull he got his fiancée through followed by the dummy, they both fell to the ground on the other side of hazard line completely intact. While her safety was his first concern it was an unprecedented opportunity to confirm or deny their theory. “Are you ok?! Is it working, what did you see?!”

Candance was convulsing, her pupils unfocused. “VOTMZRIG IVSKRX OORY!”

“Candy?”

She suddenly got up. “When Gravity Falls and earth becomes sky, fear the beast with just one eye!”

“Sweetie get hold of yourself! You’re not making any sense!”

Mason reached out to Candance. Suddenly she recoiled at his touch her gaze now focused and normal but angrily set upon her rescuer. “This machine is dangerous! You’ll bring about the end of the world with this, you have to destroy it before it destroys us all!”

Mason was taken aback. “I, we can’t destroy this! It’s my life’s work, our lives’ work! You called it ‘our baby’!”

“No this isn’t a baby, it’s an abomination!” Candance then spoke more softly. “I fear we’ve unleashed a great danger onto the world, one I’d just as soon forget. I…I quit!”

Mason could believe what he was hearing, the hurt was so intense in his head and his heart the words came out before he could reason on them. “Quit?! But our work has been as much of our relationship as anything! The Club, that night on the trail, the tunnel of love at the carnival, the plans for our wedding, are you quitting all of that too?! You can’t be serious!!”

Candy looked back with a furious gaze and hot tears streaming down her cheeks. “You want to know how serious I am?!!

She didn’t give reason a moment either. She took the ring she gave him that night off her finger and threw it at his feet. It gave a soft tinkle as it hit the stone floor.

Candance turned her back on Mason and started walking away. “Dipper Pines, I thought you were a nice guy, but I guess you only care about yourself.”

As hard as he tried reason still evaded him, she was supposed his Marie Currie and now she was just leaving. Mason took his own ring off and threw it on top of Candance’s. “FINE! I’ll do it without you! I don’t need you; I don’t need anyone!”

_“Fine! I can make it on my own! I don’t need you; I don’t need anyone! I’ll make millions and you’ll rue the day you turned your back on me! You hear me, rue!!”_

The fact that he just echoed his twin’s words over a decade later hundreds of miles away had snapped him back to reality. For a few moments he just knelt alone in portal room and cried over what was probably his one and only shot at love.

Suddenly whispers came flooding into his ears like the lamentations of lost souls. “What? Who said that?”

As time passed, he feared on top of losing his love he was also losing his mind.

* * *

Candance had moved everything she couldn’t be without out of the cabin and had checked into a local motel. Despite all the trauma and horrors, the heartbreaking result was the thing she wanted to forget most of all. She had her special ‘club’ in town, but she couldn’t burden them with this, for more than one reason.

She stopped crying to record the results like a good scientist, but she decided to listen to her heart first. She picked up the most important thing she got out from the shack and entered “Mason ‘Dipper’ Pines” into the display.

“My name is Candance ‘Candy’ Chiu and I wish to unsee what I have seen. For the past year I have been working as an assistant to a visiting researcher: a close friend, and my fiancé. He has been recording his findings on Gravity Falls in a series of Journals.” She pushed those happy moments to the back of her head lest se be tempted to keep them.  “I helped him to build a machine that he believed had the potential to benefit all mankind, but something went wrong. I decided to break up with him and quit the project. But I lie awake at night, haunted by what I have done, and the love which I still possess for him. I believe I have invented a machine that can permanently erase these memories…and him…from my mind.”

Then Candance held the Memory Gun to her temple and steeled herself to pull the trigger.

“Test subject one, Candance...”

* * *

It had been weeks since the test, since Mason found out the truth about his so called “muse” Bill Cipher, since he shut the portal down, since Candance had left him. If only he had listened to her, then a wedding would be in their future instead of what was most likely the end of the world. He tried to sleep as little as possible, to keep the demon out of his mind. But even then, he knew it was only a temporary solution he had to find some way to stop or destroy Cipher once and for all.

Lately when he had been going into town, he had noticed strange graffiti of crossed out eyes on buildings and later robed people with the same symbol on their hoods sulking about in the shadows. This cult or secret society, could they be trying to stop Bill or stop Mason from stopping Bill? One night he noticed the local heiress, Pacifica Northwest, had a run in with the hooded men but when he questioned her the young girl couldn’t remember anything about the encounter. The lack of memory made him come up with a disturbing hypothesis, could Candance be responsible for this “Blind Eye”? He was unable to find her after she left, in fact no one had seen her since. The possibility that she might go to such lengths to forget had disturbed him, but that was secondary to the fact that Bill could trick or possess anyone to get the portal open again, he couldn’t trust anyone.

But Mason came up with a plan, he buried two of his journals to keep them out of the hands of anyone trying to operate the portal, the research inside them was too valuable to destroy and he might need them later to come up with a way to destroy Cipher. As for the first journal since he was certain that Candance would refuse to speak to him there was only one person he was certain he could trust with it, his estranged sister Mabel. It took a couple days of work to track her down, her rough life since they parted ways had put her on the wrong side of the law a few times, but he found she was currently working as nightclub performer in Vegas whose debts to some bad people nearly wiped out what money she had. If there was one thing working in his favor it was that she was well travelled, she’d find somewhere to hide the journal…he hoped.

All he could do now was wait as the snow had started to bury Gravity Falls, by his calculations Mabel would be arriving today. The place was a mess, but he was unmotivated to clean, mostly because staying awake for as long as possible was becoming a full-time job. He sat in the parlor just keeping track of time, reading the same books over and over wasn’t helping, he needed to focus. He took a moment to look at the engagement rings he now kept on a small chain around his neck…

“Dipper?”

He turned to suddenly find Candance had come in. “Candy! I was wrong, I should have told you about…!”

Candance put a finger to his lips. “SHHHH. I’ve been so lonely since our fight, please, I need you, I need a man.”

Suddenly she kissed him deeply and despite the suddenness he returned it, their tongues dancing in each other’s mouths. Candance took his hand and shoved it under her blouse. As he touched her chest where she guided him, she moaned with pleasure. Mason’s head was swimming, it had been far too long…

“I bet you really missed this,” she whispered in his ear. “…Pine Tree.”

Mason looked into her eyes to find they now had slit pupils and were glowing yellow. Candance then laughed with the same voice as Bill Cipher.

Mason bolted awake with a brief scream, now not even his fantasies of his sweetheart were safe from Cipher. He tucked the rings back under his shirt, this had to end, one way or another.

Suddenly there was a knock on the door. It could have his sister, but just as likely it might have been Cipher or someone he controlled, or even his sister under Cipher’s control. He grabbed a crossbow he prepared and then quickly opened the door “Who is it?! Have you come to steal my eyes?!”

“Dipper what the heck?!” his sister had answered.

He still had to be sure, but it was a relief to see Mabel, perhaps he’d even tell her about the other most important woman he had in his life, after she agreed to help him save the world.

The End


End file.
